Edit: Sorry i didn't read the "Parallels" in the title. Though I am not familiar with parallels, so I am not sure what kind of system it is actually trying to emulate. What happens if you use something else like virtualbox or some other free virtual machine software.

Well here's the confusing part: Linux Mint runs perfectly. I'm being led to believe that there is some boot option I need to pass or module I need to blacklist for Arch to work. I just have no idea what.

Why not boot Mint and use lsmod to make a comparison of what modules it is loading. Also, maybe if Mint has some kind of initramfs or initrd, maybe you could deconstruct that to see what it is doing for you.

Because I only get to an actual CLI before the CPU goes crazy ~10% of the time I've also noticed that cpu in the OS X host is ~100%. Looking into the ipc_ich module as the culprit, but I can't even find what it does on Google...

EDIT: In case anyone ever has this problem: I think solved... blacklist lpc_ich. NOT ipc_ich, which I was looking for like an idiot.